She angled the flashlight to get a good look at her three companions. Gray was the very definition of stressed and frustrated, Brandt was looking seriously exhausted, and Cade…
Cade didn’t look good at all. Her skin was paler than it normally was, her dark hair tangled and disheveled, and despite the first aid Brandt had performed on her side, her shirt was noticeably wet with blood. If Remy didn’t get them out of there sooner rather than later, she was pretty sure Cade was going to end up in a really bad situation—even more so than she already was.
“We’ve got to find another way out of here,” she said. “Let’s get back to that information desk, see if we can find another exit. I didn’t see another set of emergency exits on the map, but surely there’s another exit somewhere besides the front doors.”
“I sincerely hope so, because I’m not sure how much longer Cade’s going to stay conscious,” Gray said, dropping his voice so only she could hear that.
Remy ignored his words and made a beeline back the way they’d come, leading the way as she strode back to the information desk to examine the map again. A quick perusal proved that her memory had been correct—those were the only emergency exits marked on the map. How ridiculous, she thought, rapidly scanning the map for an alternate exit. It was so hard to think, though, with the heavy thuds and rattling doors behind her. The racket was making her head hurt and her nerves jump with every slam of a door. She swore she could hear the doors creaking and cracking under the pressure of the sheer number of infected on the other side of the glass and metal.
“There!” Gray exclaimed, jabbing a finger at the map. “Through that ballroom there, there’s a dedicated entrance and exit. And it’s clear on the other side of the building.”
No sooner had the last word left his mouth than there was a loud pop and crack behind them. Remy tensed, whirling around in the direction of the sound, just in time to see two of the entrance doors give way and break loose from their hinges, spilling several infected into the lobby area. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “Let’s go! That way!” She jabbed her finger in the direction of the indicated ballroom and drew her pistol, letting the others run past her as she took aim at the lead edge of the infected that had breached the aquarium and opened fire.
* * *
Cade was about ninety percent sure she was going to vomit as Brandt swung her around and started running in the direction Remy had pointed, jostling her and sending a fresh wave of pain through the wound in her side. She groaned, clenching her teeth hard, and redirected her focus from the ache to their immediate surroundings, where it should have been in the first place. She fumbled for the pistol she usually kept on her hip, her fingers closing around its grip, but before she could draw it from its holster, Brandt swung her around again, this time facing back the way they’d come, as he shouted, “Remy! Come on, let’s go!” Then, when the younger woman started running toward them, he swung Cade back around and asked, “You hanging in there?”
“Mostly,” she admitted, tightening what grip she had on his shoulder to help him keep her upright. “I’d be a lot better if you’d stop slinging me around like a ragdoll.”
“Sorry,” he apologized, and at least he had the good grace to sound sheepish about it. “I didn’t mean to be so rough.” His hand slid down to her side, gently touching the wetness that had infiltrated the fabric, and the scowl on his face was visible. She didn’t need to ask how bad it was; the way her shirt kept sticking to the exposed areas of her skin along the right side of her body told her everything she needed to know. With the way things were going, she wasn’t going to pull through this if they couldn’t get to safety soon enough to get the bleeding stopped and get appropriate fluids in her.
“Brandt, this is turning into a shitshow,” Cade said, half limping and half being dragged along toward a café area that stood between them and the ballroom they were angling for. “We’re not all going to get out of this. Not if you keep dragging me along like this. I’m nothing but dead weight right now. I’m slowing all three of you down. You need to let me go.”
“Are you suggesting I leave you behind?” Brandt demanded, and his voice was cold, hard, like he’d heard the world’s worst idea and was dead set against it. “Absolutely not. That’s completely out of the question.”
“But I’m going to get you guys killed—”
“Leaving you behind is not an option, Cade,” he interrupted. He tightened his grip on her, almost painfully, and added as the four of them reached the café area, “There’s no me without you, so if you stay behind, I stay behind. I’m not planning on staying behind, so you can stuff it, shut up, and move.”
There’s no me without you. The words rang in Cade’s head like a bell as Brandt led her through the café tables, most knocked askew by fleeing patrons, chairs overturned in their paths. Her throat tightened, and she forced down a swallow past the lump. Not once in her entire life had anyone ever said anything remotely resembling that to her, and she didn’t know what to do with it. But now wasn’t the time to ponder over it. She could deal with it later, when her life wasn’t being directly threatened by a combination of the infected and blood loss. Assuming she made it to later, anyway.
There was a loud crash and bang from her right, and she whipped her head in that direction, even as she was physically turned by Brandt’s reaction to the noise. The leading edge of the infected that had crammed themselves in through the front doors of the aquarium were approaching fast, had plowed full-speed into the tables just behind and to the right of them, sending a chair that was still set upside down on one of the tables crashing to the floor. There were at least fifty of them already in the building, a number rapidly growing as more and more infected slipped in through the broken and weakening front doors. Cade’s hand found her pistol again, and even with as horrible and weak as she felt, she managed to draw it from its holster, raise it, and fire it several times in the direction of their pursuers. The recoil from the pistol was nearly enough to knock her on her ass, but she managed to maintain her footing with barely a stumble—though mainly that was thanks to Brandt’s unwavering grip on her waist—and even managed to take down three of the infected pursuing them. Two didn’t stay down, though, but she didn’t stop to remedy the situation; their survival was balanced on the edge of a knife, hers in particular on an even thinner edge, and she didn’t have time to make sure every shot counted when it was all she could do to even get away.
Gunfire erupted ahead of her and Brandt, and she whipped her head that way. Even though the move made her entire world spin and tumble like she was trapped on an out-of-control merry-go-round, she got her gun up and ready to fire at whatever the threat was.
Several infected, two in Georgia Aquarium employee uniforms, one in a tux, and two more in formal dresses, all skeleton thin with starvation, probably well past dead, staggered out of the area from somewhere ahead of them, drawn, most likely, to their location by the sounds of their pursuers. Before she could open fire to try to defend them against attack—a defense that, in all honesty, would have been piss-poor, to put it charitably—Remy sprang forward, firing two bullets at two of the infected as she ran. One bullet caught one of the women in the formal dresses in the throat, and the second bullet smacked the tuxedoed man in the chest, knocking them both back to the floor. Then she drew her bolo knife from its sheath, dropped her gun on the tiled floor, and went on a furious melee attack against the remaining formally dressed woman, hacking and slashing in fast, controlled bursts.
Gray, for his part, moved to engage the two aquarium employees, striding forward with purpose and firing bullets at a range that couldn’t miss. All of the training Cade had given him paid off; both bullets he fired were perfect headshots—not hard to do so close to the target, but she was proud of him nonetheless. Then he moved to take care of the two that Remy had already shot, both of which were struggling to get off the floor.
Suddenly, Brandt let go of her and stepped to the side, raising his own pistol to
aim just past her to her right. She started to turn herself but swayed as her knees gave out and sank to the floor; her vision seemed to be tunneling, darkness closing in from the periphery of her eyesight until she slid sideways, collapsing to the floor.
The last thing she remembered before she slid into unconsciousness was Brandt opening fire as footsteps thudded against the floor in her direction.
Chapter Twenty
“Shit! Gray! Help!”
Startled, Gray whipped around at the sound of Brandt’s shout, his heart pounding, his eyes rapidly taking in the scene that had developed behind him while he and Remy had been distracted by the five infected that had come from the ballroom area. The first thing he saw was a horde of infected—way more than he’d realized—coming across the aquarium lobby toward them. The second thing he saw was Brandt standing protectively over Cade, firing steadily into the approaching crowd. The third thing he saw was Cade slumped over onto the floor, eyes closed.
Without a second thought, he shouted, “Remy!” and bolted forward, sliding down to the tile floor beside Cade, ducking low to get one of her arms around his neck, and pushing upward with everything he had to try to stand up with her. But she was completely unconscious, essentially dead weight, and the floor was hard and slick, making the task difficult when his shoes couldn’t find sufficient traction. Then Remy was there, slipping underneath Cade’s other arm, and they levered her to her feet, basically carrying her between them as they hurried for the ballroom, Brandt bringing up the rear.
“Almost there, almost there,” Gray heard Remy chanting under her breath, like she was trying her damnedest to keep them moving with promises of imminent safety. The doors loomed ahead, and as they made a beeline for them, Brandt slipped out ahead of them, shoving the doors in question open, darting inside, and quickly sweeping the immediate area before beckoning them inside. Then he shoved the doors shut and reached up to shove the door locks above the doors home, jamming them up with the heel of his hand and the one on the ground down with his boot, one after the other until all four doors were secured.
Only then did they slow down, all three of them breathing heavily, Cade sagging limply between him and Remy. Brandt stepped away from them and swept the room, his pistol up, pointing it in corners and checking under tables to make sure there weren’t any dangers in their immediate vicinity. Once he’d finished, he signaled for Gray and Remy to come forward then pointed toward the exit on the other side of the room. “That’s our target right there. It doesn’t look like there’s anything out there,” he said, squinting as he looked through the glass from where they stood. “We’re going to move that way, we’re not going to stop, and once we’re outside, we’re going to move fast. When we get into the vestibule, I’ll take Cade off your hands so we can get our speed up. We’ll need to run, but we’re going to need to run quietly.”
He looked at Gray, his eyes clearly asking, Are you in a place where you can physically run? It wouldn’t have been an unreasonable question if he’d asked out loud. Gray certainly wouldn’t have been offended by it. He gave Brandt a single nod, patting his pocket to make sure he had his inhaler as he added out loud, “I’m good to go.”
“Great,” Brandt enthused. “No hesitations, no stops, once we’re out there, just go, okay?”
“No problem,” Remy agreed, starting forward. “Let’s move.”
The four of them moved to the ballroom exit that spilled out onto the street beyond, moving as quickly as the mess in the ballroom would allow. And it was a mess; it was obvious that there was some sort of event going on at the time of the outbreak, maybe a wedding or something else equally formal, something that had gotten interrupted with suddenness and finality, judging by the random splash of old, dried blood Gray spotted splashed across one of the tables, staining the white tablecloth, the toppled chairs, the overturned tables, and the remains of rotted food on the plates that were still reasonably intact. He hoped that at least most of the people who had been here survived, but intellectually, he knew that wasn’t a real possibility.
“About how far is it to the Tabernacle from here?” Gray spoke up, skirting awkwardly around a fallen chair and trying to not lose his grip on Cade. He hoped it wasn’t far; while he was pretty sure he could make it, the last thing he wanted to do was tax his lungs any more than absolutely necessary, especially since he was running low on inhalers.
“About half a mile,” Brandt answered, clearing a few stray chairs out of their path as he moved ahead of them.
“Jesus, we’re that close?” Remy said. “Feels like we’re an eternity away.”
“Feels like it’s been an eternity since we left Alabama,” Gray admitted. “I feel like we’ve been stuck in a never-ending nightmare.”
“Well, Lord willing, the nightmare is going to be over soon,” Brandt said. He signaled for them to stop and approached the vestibule leading to the exit doors, his pistol up and aimed as he eased his way to the doors and peered out through the glass. He stood motionless for long moments, staring out of the glass, as still as a statue save for the slow and steady breaths that moved his chest. The minutes that ticked by were punctuated by loud thuds as the infected that were swarming into the building made their way to the ballroom doors and tried to break through; the sounds were starting to wear on Gray’s nerves, to the point where he started to flinch with each particularly loud smack against the doors.
“Oh, can we please get moving already?” he murmured under his breath. He was pretty sure he was going to develop a nervous tic from all the constant racket.
Thankfully, it was only a moment more before Brandt holstered his pistol and beckoned them forward. Gray breathed out a sigh of relief and started forward, grasping Cade’s arm that was draped over his shoulder and hooking the other one around her waist to keep her steady as he and Remy dragged her to Brandt. Brandt ducked down to replace Remy under Cade’s right arm, shifting the unconscious woman’s weight onto him, then he swung her up into his arms with an ease that instantly made Gray envious of the fact that the Marine was so physically stronger than him.
“Let’s move,” Brandt ordered. “When you get outside, cut right. And whatever you do, stay silent.”
* * *
When the Tabernacle came into view, standing tall and square against the graying skies, surrounded by military vehicles, Brandt couldn’t begin to describe the relief that flooded his gut. They were almost there; they were practically already there. As they reached the edge of Centennial Drive, though, he could see the thick steel chain wrapped around the handles on the former church’s front doors, undisturbed by the passage of time; once he, Remy, and Gray scrambled across the street to the front of the building, he got a good look at the boards crisscrossing the large green doors, nailing them firmly shut.
“Brandt, why are the doors nailed shut from the outside?” Remy asked nervously. Brandt adjusted his grip on Cade, and her head lolled against his shoulder; he smoothed his fingers over her thick hair as Remy continued. “Doesn’t that usually mean it’s full of the infected?”
“Usually,” he agreed as he made a beeline for the building. “The military did stuff like this on purpose so people would think it was, in fact, full of the infected and steer clear.”
“So how do we get in?” Gray asked, sounding breathless from their fast and silent jog from the aquarium. “I don’t have a crowbar or anything on me to bust any padlocks or pull boards out of doors anymore.”
“Just follow me and keep your mouth shut,” he ordered, making for the left side of the building. The entire back side of the structure, complete with most of the white building attached to the back of it, was fenced in with sturdy-looking chain-link fencing; coils of barbed wire rimmed the top of the entire fence line. He carefully passed Cade into Gray’s arms before studying the fence, trying to figure out how to get them inside. Normally, he’d get them up onto the dumpster blocking the gate where bands used to enter the backstage area, since that portion of the fence had less
barbed wire on it than the rest, but considering Cade was in no shape to climb onto the dumpster under her own willpower even if he paid her to, that idea was dead in the water. He contemplated lifting her over. He wasn’t sure it’d work, but it was a chance he’d have to take if he expected to get them all safely inside. No other option was acceptable.
Brandt made sure his sidearm was still secure in its holster before he hauled himself onto the dumpster, digging his feet and hands into the diamond-shaped links on the fence and dragging himself up. He climbed to the top of the fence then straddled the metal pole at the top, careful to avoid the sparse barbed wire, and slung himself over, dropping to the pavement on the other side. He landed hard on the ground, his knees jarring painfully, shook the ache off, and got busy, making short work of the gate. Then he flung it open and scrambled back onto the dumpster blocking the gate, beckoning to Remy.
“Come on, get on up here,” he instructed, catching her hands and lifting her onto the dumpster as her feet tried to find purchase on its slick metal surface. “I need you on the ground so you can help catch Cade when I pass her over, okay?” Remy scrambled down to the ground on the other side of the dumpster, looking around cautiously as Brandt motioned to Gray. The younger man eased Cade up higher, and he hooked his hands under her arms and lifted. The muscles in his arms bulged from the awkward attempt to lift her to the top of the dumpster, and she groaned faintly as he settled her down beside him.
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